Star Wars-like weapon will be on public display at Naval Base San Diego in July

Navy railgun in action

This summer, San Diego will host the public unveiling of a military weapon that the Navy’s chief scientist calls a Star Wars-like technology that is nevertheless now viable.

In July, the Navy will hold a static display of its $500 million electromagnetic railgun prototype program at San Diego Naval Base, aboard the Joint High Speed Vessel Millinocket. It’s the same ship on which the Navy will perform the first maritime firing test of the weapon in 2016.

“The American public has never seen it,” said Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, in a recent telephone press conference.

“Frankly, we think it might be the right time for them to know what we’ve been doing behind closed doors in a Star Wars fashion,” he said. “It’s now reality. It’s not science fiction. It’s real and you can look at it.”

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Railguns use an electromagnetic force -- known as the Lorenz Force -- to launch a projectile between two rails. A high-power electric pulse is delivered to the rails, where a magnetic field is generated.

The result: A 23-pound projectile can be hurtled at speeds up to Mach 7 and travel more than 100 miles. And the cost of each projectile is about $25,000. That’s 1/100th the price a conventional missile, Klunder said.

Navy officials have been discussing the railgun as an exciting future capability for some time, and the prototype program officially began in 2005. Between 2005 and 2011, the Navy spent $250 million on the effort, and officials say they expect to invest the same amount between 2012 and 2017.

Klunder described the weapon as a game-changer whose time is just about here.

In 2016, the Navy will test the single-shot capability of one of its two prototypes, made by San Diego-based General Atomics and BAE Systems.

Officials chose the Millinocket -- a noncombatant catamaran intended for cargo and troop carrying -- because its broad flight deck has plenty of space for the weapon, which consists of the gun mount, power supply and three other major pieces.

In July, the Office of Naval Research awarded a $34.5 million follow-on contract to BAE for a multiple-shot prototype that will conduct its first shipboard firing tests in 2018. That prototype will incorporate auto-loading of projectiles and technology to manage the heat generated by the power required.

The following year, the Navy would begin studying how to integrate the weapon onto ships.

“I really think it will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go, ‘Do I even want to go engage a naval ship?’ Because you are going to lose. You can throw anything at us, and the fact that we can shoot a number of these rounds at very affordable costs -- it’s my opinion that they don’t win,” Klunder said.

Current Navy destroyers and cruisers have between 96 and 122 vertical firing tubes for launching Tomahawk and other missiles. In comparison, each railgun could be accompanied by hundreds of projectiles, Klunder said.